On Feb 17, 2009, at 12:50 PM, Larry Masinter wrote:
>> But usually it is precisely when nested fragments are transmitted
>> that
>> no MIME type is available.
>
> I thought the paragraph you were responding to agreed with your
> statement, so I'm not sure why you used "But" here.
I thought you were proposing that a special MIME type would allow
passing around of unmodified XHTML fragments that may actually be in
one of several incompatible dialects, without adding a distinct
attribute. You wrote (earlier):
> Language components without distinctive root element/attributes
> or even namespaces at all can be passed around unchanged, given
> sufficient contextual information about which language was
> intended. The MIME type supplies that contextual information.
That sounds to me like the MIME type would be providing context in the
case of "language components without distinctive root element".
>> Atom <text> elements have a MIME attribute that may only be "xhtml",
>> "html" or "text"....
>
> I'd go through your email line by line, but I think in general
> you are using the term "MIME type" incorrectly, and thus it
> makes discussions difficult. Certainly, "xhtml", "html",
> "text" are not MIME types.
Sorry, that was a mistake on my part. The "type" attribute in Atom is
either one of the keywords "xhtml", "html" or "text", or a MIME
content type. In the case of the <atom:text> element, only the
keywords are allowed. In the case of the <atom:content> element,
either one of these keywords or a MIME type may be supplied.
Regards,
Maciej